When Hermione Granger was twelve, she fell in love for the first time, unaware of the consequences. Unaware that love was not always a good thing. Unaware that love wasn't always the right word.
Sometimes grooming was.
Grooming wasn't really a word when she was a kid. And if it had been, she had no doubt that she would have thought she was immune. Looking back, she'd thought she was safe from a lot of things.
Her parents loved her. She was getting good grades.. She had struggled to find friends when she was young, but she was getting better at it. Ron and Harry were unserious and unreliable, but they included her in their mischief and their lunch table conversation, and when they did, other people acknowledged her too.
That was all she really wanted. Acknowledgement. Validation. Praise.
“You're not like your friends. You're more….. mature.”
What a dangerous phrase. So separating, so devastating. And how much she had wanted it to be true. She wanted to grow up already.
She hadn't known.
xXx
Adult Hermione Granger is struggling through healer training and volunteer work by the tips of her fingernails, clinging onto and scratching at success, desperate to live up to what she once thought she was. She's exhausted, she's trying so very hard to care about the planet and house elf rights, and she is desperately wanting to escape her past. She tries therapy, then meditation, then exercise.
They don't help. She needs something with more…. edge.
She's burnt out and apathetic. Her eyes feel haunted. Her body feels unfamiliar. Every day she wakes up, she forgets that this is what she is now.
She wakes up feeling small and normal, and the second she moves, her body contorts into something strange and unfamiliar. Her limbs are heavier than they used to be when she swings herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. Her chest has swells, like something is growing beneath her skin, ready to burst. Her hands are larger, and calluses are formed on the insides of her index fingers from years of holding pens and quills, the hands of a stranger doing her bidding as she pulls off her bonnet. Her feet have an unfamiliar ache when she stands.
When she finally slides in front of her bathroom mirror, she is never prepared for the face she sees.
When she was twelve, her eyes were bright with excitement. She knew so much, she had so much to share!
At twenty-six,, her face is haggard. Her nose takes up more room now that there aren't her teeth to contend with. Dark circles encircle her eyes like shadows waiting to rush her back to sleep. Skin stretches over her cheekbones like the fabric of a mannequin: rough, hollow, scarred by a cacophony of needles and acne. All her baby fat is lost to time.
It feels like a skin suit. She feels like she can unzip it and walk away. No matter how many years Hermione has lived and grown in this body, she feels alien in it.
There's potions to help with that. Less refined, less exact than polyjuice. Instead of stealing someone's exact likeness, they're meant to fine tune your own. She's experimented with them.
They sting like the devil, but when she looks in the mirror, at her softened face and prepubescent body, it feels more natural. More familiar.
Hermione Granger is stuck at twelve, when she first fell in l-
Hermione Granger is stuck at twelve, when Severus Snape first molested her.
xXx
She tries to forget most of her past. She tries to drown it out in homework and protest signs and books and her friends. Ron and Harry are still there, and she's made more, besides. She's close with several of her fellow healers in training, and has a few coworkers at her shitty part time jobs who she likes. One is another muggleborn, who carries around cigarettes and valium and a few miscellaneous prescription painkillers. Another is a witch who brews a lot of questionable potions, and doesn't ask questions about what Hermione wants to forget.
That's where she really gets stuck. Her professors notice. The wizarding world isn't great with mental health, but they know potion addiction when they see it. And Hermione can't function without them anymore.
When she goes back to see her parents after rehab, there is a new family next door, with a muggle daughter her age who is incredibly chatty and likes to invite her to drinks or the bookstore, where she will hover around Hermione with stories of her customer service job and all the drama it entails.
It's nice to hear someone else's problems. It's nice to drown out the way that drinking reminds her of when Severus used to give her sips of alcohol. To calm her.
She never stays long. She'd rather be a flake than get stuck thinking of his hands on her.
She's trying to forget, but the closer she creeps to graduation, to having her own life, the harder it gets. All it takes is a moment of quiet to feel like a child again, small and confused, and she aches for the simplicity of it. The ease of her Hogwarts classes, the meaningless chatter of preteens gawking at quidditch equipment, of simply being told what to do with her life. There was a schedule for all of her meals, her bedtime, when she could read for work or for play. Managing that all is a bigger drain on her as an adult than the actual physical toll her schedule takes.
Her body aches in strange places. She drinks coffee now. She stands in front of the mirror, toothbrush in hand, staring at herself, and feels fundamentally separated from herself in a way she cannot cross. The face staring back at her is not hers. Strangely perfect teeth, whitened to an unnatural degree. Curls instead of her childhood frizz, forcibly tamed with creams and detanglers and a proper pick comb, pulled into her usual slick ponytail, baby hairs creeping like tentacles over her face. Her eyes underlined by developing crows feet, like a bad grade. Wrinkles forming on her forehead, remnants of her daily stress since graduation. Spots and craters on her chin and cheeks, scarring left from when puberty was taking its acne toll.
Her twenty-six years of weathering the storm are starting to show.
If she looks like this, how will anybody ever-
She stops, spits out the toothpaste, and goes to bed.
xXx
When Hermione was twelve, her potions teacher asked her to stay behind after class. Ron made a face; Harry looked concerned.
They both hated Snape. Hermione hated him too, because he was unfair, and incredibly biased towards his own house, making potions the one class in which she never earned points for Gryffindor. She'd even lost them, to her immense dissatisfaction. Yet he was still a professor, so she stayed.
Ron and Harry eventually left, Harry shooting an apologetic look at her and a hateful one at Snape before he went, but leaving her all the same.
The classroom was empty, and Snape stared at her. Tall, dark, imposing, strict. An authority figure. Oh, how twelve year old Hermione longed from approval from every adult around her. It would take a long time for her to outgrow that.
“You did acceptably in class today. I find it regrettable that you always pair yourself with such…. useless help.”
He is referring to Ron. Hermione wants to point out that today, at least, it was not Ron's fault when their potions went south. Lavender had brought them some of the ingredients, when usually Hermione would pick them herself, and Hermione had known upon seeing them that it was the wrong variety of sage and that the fangs were clearly old, but her tentative acquaintanceship with Lavender was shaky enough as it was. It was a kind and genuine gesture, and she couldn't say no. Even if Ron hadn't bumped or spilled something, their potion had been set up to be merely adequate from the beginning.
Still better than Lavender's had turned out, at least.
She knows this, but she hesitates to speak up for her friend. She stays quiet. Snape observes her from his desk for a minute longer, and then shoos her away, scowling.
“Perhaps next time you can work directly under me, so that you will not have to worry about such…. distractions.”
Her heart skips a beat. What a privilege! Direct tutelage from one of the best potions makers in Europe! Snape is well known for his mastery of the craft. And he is hard to please, but that will just make it more special if she can struggle her way into his approval! She had thought she was going to be in trouble, but instead, all is better than well! She has practically been praised!
Hermione is trembling with glee as she leaves.
This is not the last time she will tremble for Snape, but this is the only one she likes to remember.
She remembers all of it, though.
xXx
Adult Hermione pops some pills and swallows some pumpkin juice, before she washes that down with some coffee. She stares, bleary-eyed, at the screen of her new laptop. They've finally cracked that thing about magic affecting electronics.
When she was a kid, she kept a diary, but she stopped at some point. All the things she wanted to write down were too dangerous.
It feels safer, now, looking at a computer screen. Whatever she writes here can be deleted as soon as she is done, no traces left, no thoughts given.
She starts with remembering when he started touching her.
xXx
“Well done, Miss Granger.”
“Not a complete failure, Miss Granger.”
“Perhaps if you focused on more important things, Miss Granger.”
“Perhaps if you could join me after class, Miss Granger, I could give you some clearly much needed advice.”
“I simply trust you with this task more than your classmates, Miss Granger. You're more responsible than Potter or Weasley.”
“You're like me when I was your age.”
“Do your classmates make you struggle a lot?”
“Five points to Gryffindor.”
“That Longbottom pest is a waste of space - not at all like you, Hermione.”
“Could you hold this, Hermione?”
“Could you help me after class, Hermione?”
“Could you use a friend, Hermione?”
“Are you lonely?”
“Come to my chambers later. We can discuss your work in class more privately.”
“Do your friends know? Your parents? You cannot tell anyone - about us. They wouldn't….. understand.”
“Mione?” Harry says her name tentatively, and she looks up from her book. Extracurricular reading that Severus had suggested. It still feels strange to think of him like that, but he had insisted a while ago, saying it was much too strange to think of each other as merely student and teacher. He said they were closer than that.
Harry is looking at her, without Ron nearby. It's just them, in a sheltered corner of the common room, mostly shielded from the noise of Gryffindors coming back after a day of classes.
“It's been a while since you ate with us. Are you feeling well? Has Ron said something mean again? You know he's sorry about last year. He's told me.”
Hermione shakes her head. “No. I've just been…. busy. Professor Snape is assigning me extra work.” She can see annoyance cross Harry's face at the mention of his least favorite professor, and she hurries to add more. “I asked for it! I felt I wasn't doing as well as I wanted. I want a perfect O, and you know he grades hard. So I asked him for some extra assignments!”
Harry frowns, but nods. “Well, if you ever want to join…” he says, before leaving her alone, presumably off to find dinner with Ron, finally leaving her in peace.
Honestly, she doesn't mind Harry. He's kinder and quieter than Ron, and though less enthusiastic about his studies than her, he still cares enough to get okay grades. But Severus is right. They're both a distraction from what really matters, and they're both immature. Harry is a trouble magnet, and Ron was really mean to her last year, before they became friends.
It hurts a little to be alone all the time, but she's used to it. She was alone before Hogwarts. And besides, now she has Severus.
xXx
Adult Hermione Granger downs another potion, then some more mediocre vodka seltzer as well. She really needs to stop mixing things without knowing the consequences. She's heard from one of her coworkers at her part time job, waiting tables in Hogsmeade in between elf rights protests, that he does this thing where he smokes marijuana and then drinks, and always feels terrible afterwards. He calls it getting crossed.
She feels terrible now.
It takes a minute for the potions to take effect. For her face to change, her skin to smooth, her stature to shrink.
For her body to go back to where her mind is stuck.
It takes too long.
She wants out.
Adult Hermione Granger retrieves her razor from the bath, where she showers every single night to maintain the pristine hairlessness of her youth. Other feminists she knows, Hannah and Ginny and the muggle girl who lives next to her parents, let their leg hair grow, but Hermione can't stand the sight of it. Snape always praised how smooth her young skin felt when he held her.
She can't stand how she still cares about what he thought of her. She can't stand how he made her think of herself.
Hermione feels trapped.
She looks in the mirror. The stinging that the potion brings hasn't even taken place yet. She can still taste its citrus sour. Or is that the other drink? How many of those has she had? When she was a child, none of the adults she knew drank. She got this solely from Severus, watching him nurse firewhiskey by the fireplace and then rage. Usually at her.
She got so much from him. From a fear of adult men that eventually goes away to the way she handles stress: poorly, in ways that make her parents concerned, her school threaten to drop her, and Harry and Ron go out to pubs with her partly so they can keep an eye on her. Funny how the man who ruined her life could control so much of it, even after he was gone.
Last week she was shadowing a mediwitch, and found herself looking with abject horror at the most attractive patient she had ever seen.
He was fifteen years old and short for his age range.
What has she done? How far is she lost, when none of this was even her fault? She just didn't know better. She didn't know adults could treat her like that. She didn't know she could become one like that.
She doesn't want to. She wants to stay young, and have a second chance.
She wants to be twelve again, and know how to say no.
The stinging has began. It's too late. Something in these two potent liquids is definitely clashing, because Hermione is struggling to feel anything. She crushes her nails into her palms, and doesn't feel any pain. She feels like she's been standing here for hours, but her cellphone still says 11PM. She feels like the spider they gave sleeping pills to, the web of her thoughts hazy and half there.
She lifts the razor to her alien face, and starts to turn back the years to twelve again.